Fatal (17 page)

“You don’t want to know,” said Barrow, and pushed his way out the door.

*****

Cassie walked the first mile of the highway in a sputtering rain. The wind blew sheets of water across the road and into the ditch, where it joined the flow headed south. Overhead, a blanket of black clouds stretched from horizon to horizon. The lightning was gone though, and she counted her blessings. She was soaked through to the skin now. Her boots squished with every step, but she plodded on, pushing to get distance between herself and the wreckage behind her. The further away she got, the less connection anyone could make to her.

The rain had begun to settle into a steady drone when the first truck passed. Cassie saw the headlights miles ahead, long before the driver could have picked out a solitary figure walking in the rain. The ditch was her only refuge. She made her way down the side, digging her heels into the softening mud step by step, until the berm of the road was a foot over her head. The vehicle passed, and when she lifted her head, she saw a pickup truck with a flatbed full of straw behind it, moving at a careful pace away from her and back towards the coast. The trip back up the side of the ditch was a little tougher than the trip down. Cresting the top put her back on flat ground. The truck was a speck in the distance, but she could see the brake lights flare. As she watched, emergency blinkers came on. The driver had seen the wreck and stopped. Before too long the highway would be the center of attention. Cassie turned north, heading off at a fast pace. Fifteen minutes later the sirens began to cut through the rain.

*****

A beer bottle rolled off the top of the widow’s walk, down the slates of the roof and into a trashcan in the backyard. So far, Beuhl had gotten four of the eight empties into the barrel. The other four landed close by. It was a change of pace from stacking them on the porch, and for a few minutes he felt good about the new way he had found to entertain himself on a country evening. In the distance, the lights of the Ag Center burned on the four corners of the low building. Another light hung over the gate. Beuhl could just barely make out the figure of a guard inside the booth whenever the man moved, which wasn’t often. A single vehicle had come and gone, a delivery truck of some type, it looked to him. After a perfunctory check by the guard, the truck was waved in. Fifteen minutes later, it rolled back out the gate and turned up the highway and the night was silent for another hour.

By that time, Beuhl was getting tired and running out of beer. He cracked open a bottle and tossed the cap into the gutter. If he kept it up, the maintenance man would have a job cleaning them out in the spring. He remembered his resolve to stop drinking so much, and the thought drifted into his trip to town and Karen Strait. Sitting on the top of his house, it was easy to remember the curve of her hips and the easy way she had spoken to him after so many years. It was as if he had never left. His leaving had not been of his own choice, and in the intervening years, filled with the intensity of school and law practice, he’d forgotten all about the people in his hometown. Maybe he should have come back sooner. That would have meant dealing with his father and a skimpy practice in a working class town. On the other hand, the big city gig had never made him happy. It meant money, and a string of relationships built on endless rounds of country club drinks and expensive dinners, none of which had been better than a young and eager Karen Strait, naked and with her hair full of hay. He made a mental note to get the barn unlocked for the hay delivery and get some good steaks laid in for dinner. The last bottle was rolling down the roof and into the trashcan when the black Lincoln rolled up to the gate.

Beuhl picked up his binoculars, settling them on the vehicle as it came to a stop. The guard leaned into the driver’s side window, looking intensely at something the driver was holding, probably identification. The automatic gate rolled back and the Lincoln passed the building into a gravel lot behind. Two men got out. One went ahead, paused at the door, and held it open for the other man. They disappeared inside. An hour later, Beuhl packed it in, making his way back downstairs in the dark, and went to bed, dreamed of black Lincolns chasing a young girl across a field of hay.

*****

A few hundred yards from where Beuhl was sleeping fitfully, Ronnie Gilmore and Luke Francis were engaged in tense conversation. Ronnie, rousted from a sound sleep himself, was in no mood to be taking orders. Francis was pushing and pushing hard. Finding Vit by using Ronnie and Cassie was only the first test. If it was successful, he was ready to move on to bigger things.

“Look,” Ronnie was saying, “it’s not like I can just pop in and out whenever I want. We need to schedule this thing for when he’s likely to be working, and besides, I need a few days rest.”

Francis was shaking his head. They had been going at it for half an hour now, Francis pushing for an immediate session and Ronnie pushing back. “I need this information now,” Thorne said. “Our window here is getting short. We have negotiations coming up in two weeks and we have to know what we’re dealing with. We don’t have time for you to be in bed sleeping.”

“Look, this guy is on the other side of the world. Right now, it’s the afternoon and he’s probably home or headed home. We do it tonight. That will put him at work — if he goes to work — and give me time to get prepared. Besides, we still have to talk about what’s going to happen if I do help you. I want Cassie left alone. I want to be left alone. Our deal with Archer didn’t include being taken prisoner and thrown into a jail.”

Francis pulled out a cigarette, tapping the butt on the table. He signaled his man and an ashtray appeared in front of him. He offered the pack to Ronnie, who shook his head.

“Your deal with Archer was the work of a foolish old man, and that old man is dead,” Francis said. “We can’t just let you run around anywhere you want. If you’re worried about Cassie you should try and find her on one of your little jaunts and let me know where she is. I can protect her. If another agency was to find out about you, both of your lives would be in danger. The Russians would rather see you dead than let us keep you.”

Ronnie wasn’t buying it. “The only way anyone would find out would be for you to do something stupid like you did the last time. Archer didn’t work us to death. He used us only when he had to use us. You go to the well too often and you’re going to dry it up. You’ll burn us out. We’ll just stop. What are you going to do if we decide not to cooperate anymore, kill us?”

Francis crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray. He headed for the door, where he paused. “I’ll kill one of you if I have to. It’s up to you to decide which one of you that’s going to be. But, I’m not unreasonable. We’ll do another session tonight.” He walked a few steps back into the room, putting his face down close to Ronnie’s. “You need to understand where I’m coming from. I can use both of you or one of you. You think this is prison? You have no idea. You have no chance at a life at all if I don’t give it to you. Cooperate, and we’ll talk about easing things up. Keep fighting me and I’ll kill that girlfriend of yours when I find her.”

With that, Francis walked out, leaving Ronnie in the room with the smell of smoke still hanging in the air. He sat a few minutes before he returned to his own room and got in bed. It was a long time before he got back to sleep.

*****

The water was a foot deep in the bottom of the ditch when Cassie crossed. For ten minutes she sprawled against the bank while a parade of vehicles with flashing lights passed back and forth, police cars and ambulances and a fire truck with a wrecker running close behind. All moving fast, too fast to see a mud-covered figure in the ditch, but before long a more thorough search would be in the works. With nothing in sight now, Cassie splashed across the ditch and into the field beyond, moving low through some type of crop she didn’t recognize. A line of trees set back two hundred yards was her goal. She made it in half an hour, lying flat when traffic passed. By the time she made into the trees, it was full dark. The rain had stopped. The weather was warm enough for Cassie to sit still for a while and think things through.

If Francis had men looking for her this far out, she was on the right track. Her decision to avoid the Interstate was solid enough. That way would have been covered. Francis had been more thorough than she had given him credit for. They knew she was moving north, headed for Virginia. They would be combing the area north of the wreck, looking for a girl on foot. She had little food, a few candy bars stuck in her pack, and no water. She had money, but would have to expose herself somewhere to spend it. Moving south meant backtracking over ground she’d already covered, but seemed like the best thing to do. The search would be concentrated north with the expectation that she had continued towards Virginia. After a short rest, Cassie picked up her bag and headed south. There was a small truck-stop where Highway 29 and 90 met. If it was clear, she could clean up a little and make a decision from there.

Moving along the tree line was easy enough, but slow. She had to push her way through windbreaks of smaller trees set at an angle to the field, running out to the road. After a few miles, she followed one of the breaks out to the highway itself. With nothing in sight in either direction, Cassie moved back onto the highway itself and turned south in a fast walk. She could see a soft glow on the horizon where the highway met the coast. The miles passed slowly, broken by the occasional passing car, but no police presence that she could detect. Each time, she jumped into the ditch, emerging to plod back down the highway. The sky had begun to lighten up in the east by the time she reached the truck stop. The last hundred yards she covered back in the ditch, making her way along the steep bank until she could see the parking lot. There were a half a dozen rigs parked in the rear of the lot, and five cars in front. One was a Florida State Police car. The smell of bacon cooking drifted back to Cassie and her stomach growled. She dug in her bag, found a candy bar, and settled in to wait things out. It was going to be a race between the rising sun and the appetite of the troopers inside.

The troopers won. Minutes before daybreak, two officers in uniform emerged from the truck stop diner, one picking his teeth with a toothpick, and drove off, heading west down the coast highway. Cassie waited five more minutes before making her way across the parking lot. The diner had a row of six booths along the wall on her right. They looked out on the highway, but held a fine layer of condensation that blocked the outside view. A counter with plastic-covered stools ran out left, three men sitting one stool apart from each other along its length. Cassie went straight back to the bathroom, where she locked the door. She almost laughed when she looked in the mirror. Her hair was a ragged wet mess with bits of leaves and mud tangled in the curls. Ten minutes later it was combed out. Wearing a new shirt dug out of her bag, she at least looked halfway presentable, though her pants were still soaked through. She took a seat in the last booth, facing the entrance, and wiped the moisture off the window beside her.

“You’re a wet little thing, aren’t you?” the waitress said when she came over. “Had a rough night?”

“Yes,” Cassie said. “My car broke down and I had to hitch all the way here from Biloxi. I was doing okay, but I had to walk the last few hours in the rain.”

“Well, we’ll get some hot coffee and some food into you.” She placed a knife and fork on a napkin on the table in front of Cassie. “You’ll feel better then. Where you headed, honey?”

“I’m trying to get to Virginia. I lost my job and I’m going to live with my dad until I can get back on my feet.”

“Poor thing. You need a nice hot breakfast. We got an omelet special going. I’ll throw in some extra grits on the side. That’ll warm you up.”

“Sounds great,” Cassie said. “Is there a bus station anywhere near here?”

“That’s down the road a bit. Do you have money for a ticket?”

Cassie thought for a second. Francis would surely be watching the bus station if he had men this far out. The bus was out of the question. “I’d rather catch a ride if I can. I don’t have a lot of money,” she said. “Maybe I’ll try and hitch a ride after I eat.”

The waitress had on a yellow dress with a frayed collar. The name tag on her left breast said Marge in faded gold letters. She picked at a worn spot on her collar, nodded, and walked back into the kitchen. Cassie heard her banging around back there. A few minutes passed before she brought out a plate brimming with food. “Enjoy,” she said, and moved off behind the counter, refilling coffee cups along the way.

Cassie dug in with a vengeance. The long night and the aftereffects of the accident had her worn out and sore from head to toe. She worked her way quickly through the omelet and started on the grits. Marge was true to her word; the pile of grits on the plate was enormous. Cassie made her way halfway through it and gave up, crossed the knife and fork on the plate, pushing it to the middle of the table. With a full stomach she felt some of her strength come back. She gathered her things and went to the register to pay.

“Thank you for the extra grits,” Cassie said, while the waitress collected her money. “Sorry I couldn’t eat them all, but they were really good.”

“I make the best grits around,” Marge said, smiling. “A little salt and a little extra butter when you spoon them out. That’s the trick.”

“I’ll remember that,” Cassie said. “Thanks again. I guess I’ll see if I can pick up a ride north.”